IRVINE — A year ago, there was one difference between graduate school and the NFL for Cameron Lynch.

Graduate school wanted him.

The prestigious Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse, the hatching point for numerous broadcasters, had accepted Lynch into its master’s program, after his four years of football for the Orange.

Thirty-two NFL teams, given seven rounds each to draft him, had rejected him.

This gave Lynch a Plan B few NFL applicants have. If you’re not playing football, the next best thing is talking it.

“Getting into graduate school was a big achievement for me,” Lynch said. “I knew I could make it, regardless of football. That made football just an ‘Amen.’”

Except his prayers got answered.

Lynch signed with St. Louis as an undrafted free-agent. He needed a telescope to see the top of the depth chart. He made the Rams anyway, stayed the whole year, and now helps support the rookie linebackers whose eyes are as wide as his last year.

Those eyes are wary, too. Just like in the studio, the audition never ends.

“Last year in camp, it was eat or be eaten,” Lynch said, standing on the practice field at UC Irvine. “Anything we did, I knew I had to be highly competitive. Whether it was eating, or getting to the meetings first, or being punctual on the field, I knew I had to give an impression. I was on the bottom of every list.

“You just keep grinding, keep chopping wood. I had to make sure they knew I’m Cameron Lynch.”

The first preseason game for the Rams is Saturday, against Dallas in the Coliseum. Two and only two noteworthy things can happen during the exhibitions. One is injury, like the one that felled Trent Green in 1999 and gave the world Kurt Warner. The other is a guy like Lynch who barges his way onto the team, like the undrafted Victor Cruz did for the Giants in 2010.

Lynch had buzzed his way into the staff discussions by his work on special teams. “I set up a couple of subtle fumbles on kickoff coverage,” he said. In the final tuneup, against the Chiefs, Lynch had seven primary tackles. That was basically a rookie showcase, with the veterans safely on the sideline.

Two days later, the Rams put Lynch on the active roster, at the expense of veteran Jo-Lonn Dunbar. Lynch didn’t play much but he stuck around, and now he’s back to lend hope to 6-footers who weigh 229 and never had any hype to disbelieve.

“I was a 3-star recruit out of high school,” Lynch said. “That’s why it didn’t disappoint me when I wasn’t drafted. A lot of guys have played a lot of years and weren’t drafted. And I always had to deal with questions about my size. But I see guys like (5-foot-8 defensive back) Lamarcus Joyner, small beasts who play bigger than they are.

“You bang people and then get off. You have to do something that will shock them.”

Lynch played on state title teams at Brookwood High, near Atlanta, but Vanderbilt was the only SEC school to visit him. He looked at Cornell and Harvard, too. His parents made sure he knew where the library was, and Lynch was All-Academic in the ACC. His father Shawn went to Long Beach State and is now a postal inspector in Houston; mom Rhonda studied at Cal State Fullerton.

Lynch also produced a show called “Cam’s Cam,” in which he interviewed Syracuse teammates during the week.

On the field, Lynch was third-team All-ACC and went to two bowl games, which is not to be taken for granted at Syracuse. In the Pinstripe Bowl in Yankee Stadium, he got to chase around West Virginia’s Tavon Austin, now a Rams teammate.

“The more you do this, the more you realize that the mental toughness and competitiveness are just as important as the measurables,” said Clark Lea, Lynch’s position coach at Syracuse and now doing the same at Wake Forest.

“Cam was just a relentless warrior for us, and that negated all the questions about his size. Really, all you needed to do was give him a helmet.”

Here, that helmet swivels to see everything that’s ahead of or behind Lynch.

“You always look at the numbers, see how they move the pieces,” Lynch said. “How many mistakes can I limit? How many plays I can make? It’s not about who did this or that, it’s about how productive you can be. At the end, it’s up to yourself.”

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